Lost daughter remembered
Mother of Melanie Dawn Geddes wants answers about 2005 death
While two mothers got to look their daughters’ murderer in the eye this week in a Regina courtroom, the mother of another Regina woman whose killing remains unsolved longs for — yet dreads — an answer.
“I want to find justice for my girl,” Valorie Smokeyday, mother of Melanie Dawn Geddes, said in an interview Thursday. “I need to find peace.”
Those words are echoed by Eric Cleveland, who was Geddes’ partner of 10 years. They raised three daughters together — until their mother vanished in 2005.
The remains of the 24-year-old were found by chance four months later.
“I just want someone to be brought to justice ... I just want them to answer,” Cleveland said.
For Smokeyday, keeping her daughter’s memory alive and the prospect of closure is among the reasons she helped organize a public memorial event for Saturday on the George Gordon First Nation. The Celebration of Life will begin at 2 p.m. with opening remarks, a walk and service at Geddes’ grave. Other mothers of missing and murdered indigenous women and members of the FSIN have also been invited to speak and participate. A supper, with guest speakers, is planned for 5 p.m., followed by a moment of silence and a dance.
Smokeyday followed the news this week of serial killer Clayton Bo Eichler’s guilty pleas and sentencing in the 2013 murders of two young Regina women, Kelly Goforth, 21, and Richele Bear, 23.
It gives her hope that the same outcome might yet happen in her daughter’s unsolved homicide. “My hope, it rises ... One of these days we’re going to get justice.”
At the same time, she’s also anxious about what she might learn of how Geddes died.
She was last seen alive on Aug. 13, 2005. She was walking home from a social gathering at a house in the 900 block of Robinson Street. Extensive searches followed, but yielded nothing. Then on Dec. 20, 2005, three horseback riders came upon her remains in the Qu’Appelle Valley, about 35 kilometres north of Regina.
In an interview with the LeaderPost at the time, one of the riders described how she veered off the usual path and went closer to the riverbank because of the lonesome call of a coyote. “It was yipping like crazy, a few hundred yards from the body,” Lorelei Cornell said. “It’s almost like it was kind of calling us or telling us something.” She described a remote spot in haying land, about 17 kilometres south of Southey and close to the Piapot First Nation.
Cleveland recalls how back then, he was working two jobs, and Geddes had recently taken training in a new job and looked forward to its start.
“We were on our way,” he said. Their youngest daughter, just three years old at the time, can’t even remember her mother.
Much like Cleveland, Smokeyday said, “I sit here and I think of all the things that she’s missing.”
Geddes hasn’t been there for the family birthdays or seen her children grow into teenagers and young women. She’s missed graduations and the birth of her first grandchild, and soon a second one to come.
“What made her happy was her family,” said Smokeyday. “That was her life.”
Despite the passage of time, it doesn’t seem all that long ago since her daughter was lost. “It’s constantly there,” Smokeyday said, adding she feels as though she’s lost half her heart. She buried a son five years before Geddes, and came to dread five-year anniversaries. “I was so afraid of 2010 and 2015.”
She said two RCMP officers, new to the case, recently came to her home to review information. Although frustrated there has seemingly been no progress in 11 years, Smokeyday at least knows police haven’t given up.
“The one guy said he’s still working on it.”
Smokeyday hopes by keeping her daughter’s case in the public eye with events like the one planned for Saturday, someone who knows something might yet come forward.
Someday.